Duke To Host 30th Anniversary Of ‘The Cosby Show’ Discussion

Duke University
Duke To Host 30th Anniversary Of ‘The Cosby Show’ Discussion

DURHAM, NC - To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the debut of the landmark television sitcom The Cosby Show, Duke University will host a roundtable discussion on the significance of the program in American culture. 
"The Cosby Show at 30: Reflections on Race, Parenting, Inequality and Education" will be held at 7 p.m. Sept. 18 at the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke (2204 Erwin Road). It is free and open to the public. Free parking is available in the Pickens Clinic lot.
The event is sponsored by the Center for Arts, Digital Culture & Entrepreneurship (CADCE) at the Duke Consortium on Social Equity, in conjunction with the John Hope Franklin Center.

The roundtable participants are Natalie Bullock Brown, chair of the Department of Film and Interactive Media at Saint Augustine’s University; Blair LM Kelley, associate professor of history and assistant dean for interdisciplinary studies and international programs at North Carolina State University; Joshua L. Lazard, the C. Eric Lincoln Minister for Student Engagement at Duke Chapel; and Wahneema Lubiano, associate professor of African and African American Studies and literature at Duke. Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African and African American Studies and CADCE director, will moderate.
The Cosby Show, starring Bill Cosby as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, and Phylicia Rashad, as his wife Clair Huxtable, debuted on Sept. 20, 1984. The Huxtables were two highly educated, upper middle-class African-American parents raising five children. 
"Black audiences greeted The Cosby Show with a certain amount of euphoria, simply because it was regular opportunity to see black life portrayed in a 'responsible' manner," said Neal, noting that the show debuted before the re-election of Ronald Reagan and ran until 1992, just months before Bill Clinton took office. For five straight seasons, from 1985 to 1990, it was heralded as the most popular television show in America.

"The root of hip-hop generation displeasure with The Cosby Show was not simply that the show wasn’t political, but rather the show served the political function of diverting attention away from the harsh realities of Reagan-era social policies," Neal said. "In effect, the Huxtable family was posited as the 'model' black family, overriding the legitimate criticisms of Reagan-era attacks on social policies that were enacted to address social inequities the show helped obscure."